Beyond Parody

If any other president...

President Donald Trump, flanked by Vice President JD Vance and FIFA President Gianni Infantino, announces that the FIFA World Cup draw will take place on December 5 at the Kennedy Center, Friday, August 22, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

I know it is hard to fully process the things we see and hear coming out of the White House these days. It is like our brains have callouses on them, given the number of times we have been mentally burned and worn down. It is why I try to remind us of the things right in front of our noses.

Above is an official White House photo (I did crop it to highlight Trump’s hat). Here we see the President of the United States, seated behind the Resolute Desk on the Oval Office of the White House, wearing a hat that says, “Trump Was Right About Everything.”

It is not unusual to wonder “what if President [fill in the blank] did [thing Trump did]?” Can anyone imagine President Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, or Biden coming to a press event in the Oval with a hat that they themselves had made, declaring that they were right about everything? (While hosting guests, no less).

What serious human being does such a thing?

BTW, the best interpretation is that he is “joking” or that he is trolling people like me. But I ask anyone who thinks that, do you want the President of the United States acting like a 15-year-old boy on some social media platform?

Worse, can anyone imagine a past president of either party doing the following?

This is insane.

By the way, in case anyone hasn’t been following the news, Putin being “not so respectful of others” means invading his neighbor and being directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. That action is counter to the US’s and NATO’s interests, and the US has spent billions to aid Ukraine.

But sure, let’s send good ol’ Vlad an autographed photo!

All of this reminds me of this.

FILED UNDER: The Presidency, US Politics, , , , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter and/or BlueSky.

Comments

  1. DK says:

    This is insane.

    Indutably.

    This also happened:
    Trump claims leaders call him ‘The President of Europe’ (The Independent)

    Donald Trump has claimed that EU leaders have referred to him as the “president of Europe”.

    Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday (25 August), the US president said that the title, which he said leaders “jokingly” bestowed upon him, was “an honour”.

    A Mad (Wannabe) King, clearly hallucinating. Very unwell, but I doubt Jake Tapper is plotting a book about it.

    12
  2. @DK: Or, you know, Tapper is waiting until after 2028 to release the book, as any good reporter would.

    10
  3. Kylopod says:

    Sorry, I posted a comment to the wrong thread; it’s been deleted, but some may have seen it in their email.

  4. Kathy says:

    Not only a king in whatever passes for his mind, but a tacky one.

    4
  5. Gregory Lawrence Brown says:

    TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING

    This would include “You can grab them by the pussy!”

    7
  6. DK says:

    Then there’s this doozy:

    Wes Moore mocks Trump for saying governor called him ‘greatest president of my lifetime’

    Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) mocked President Trump for the commander in chief’s claim that the governor privately told him that he’s the greatest president of his lifetime.

    Trump spoke to reporters from the Oval Office on Monday, recalling his meeting with Moore at the Army-Navy football game in December. He claimed that Moore hugged him and shook his hand and told him, “You’re the greatest president of my lifetime.”

    Trump said he told Moore that it was nice of him to say that, and he wanted him to say it publicly but understood he couldn’t.

    Moore quickly responded in a post on the social platform X, writing “lol” in response to a video of Trump telling reporters about the alleged encounter.

    “Keep telling yourself that, Mr. President,” Moore commented on the post.

    …Moore accused Trump of trying to distract from the controversy surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files.

    I believe the technical term for what’s going on with Epstein’s convicted felon rapist bestie is “cuckoo for coco puffs.” In addition to Trump’s accelerating dementia, perhaps there’s a touch of untreated syphilis? Emperor Nero and George III, of Hanover come to mind.

    If it were Biden gyrating on the White House roof, rambling in ALL CAPS at 3am on socials, and repeatedly recalling imaginary convos with governors and heads-of-state, we’d be inundated with think pieces demanding 25th Amendment intervention. But of course the Very Serious People in the legacy press greet Trump’s Alzheimer’s eruptions with yawning. Because It Only Matters When It’s A Democrat.

    13
  7. Charley in Cleveland says:

    It wasn’t that long ago that the denizens of Wingnuttia were aghast that Obama desecrated the presidency by wearing a tan suit and returning a salute with a coffee cup in his hand. But there is only silence as a demented carnival barker brazenly sells his merch in the Oval Office and daily demonstrates his failing grasp of reality with his “off in the weeds” dissertations.

    13
  8. JohnSF says:

    @DK:
    To be fair to George III, by all acounts when sane he was not, personally, an arsehole.
    And to be fair to the British system of governance at the time, when insane he was bypassed.

    It’s really turning out to be one of history’s great ironies, and potentially tragedies, that the nominal “Republicans” end up enabling an “elective monarchy”.

    11
  9. Jay L. Gischer says:

    @DK: It really does seem like there is something big we aren’t seeing/being told about. Various people are acting a bit out of character, not just Trump.

    But yes, one of those things seems to be Trump’s health. I’m not really onboard with the syphilis thing, but there is something. Not just the ramblings, but the bruising on the one hand that continues to be there, suggesting to me an IV, coupled with blood thinners. Maybe other possibilities.

    5
  10. Kathy says:

    @Jay L. Gischer:

    I’m betting on kidney failure. It causes swelling due to fluid retention, especially in the lower extremities, and tends to tire people out through the day. But I’m 99.99% certain if this were the case, there’d be lines ten deep at all red states with people eager to donate a kidney for El Taco. He might wind up with six or seven inside him.

    5
  11. Hume's Ghost says:

    He has been a horrible person his whole life, deficient in pretty much every measure of decency. But now that he slipping into dementia combined with being Roman Emperor style drunk with power it’s going off the rails pretty fast. How many weeks before he just straight up demands he have his political enemies executed? The whole thing is insane, like the parts where he boasts about how much gold he covered the office in and everyone acts like it’s normal. I mean, it was May 31 this year when he said Biden died in 2020 and was replaced with “cloned doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities” and the country just shrugged it off. Like, the most powerful person in the country is apparently actually clinically f’ing insane and we go about our business like everything is ok.

    10
  12. @Hume’s Ghost: It is just beyond belief in some ways, and yet here we are.

    2